I have been visiting DMO websites across America and have discovered that for the visitor, using these websites can be a challenge. WE MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO CONNECT THE DOTS! … MAKE THE
“Marketing consists of the strategies and tactics used to identify, create and maintain satisfying relationships with customers that result in value for both the customer and the marketer.”
What you say? Our website is beautiful, filled with all the information anyone would need to visit us. Is it? Can you easily peruse back and forth to the information a visitor needs? Are you losing them in cyberspace just because your visitor can not return to your website when they have clicked on a link you have recommended? Every DMO web site I have visited has sent me out of their website on a journey never to return unless I re-enter the web address or more frustrating than that shut down my internet and make me start over!
With that said, the most common inconvenience was that back arrows on your sites did not work once I clicked on another supplier’s website; your art associations, hotels, civic centers, restaurants, attractions, and this list goes on and on…well you get the idea. Also, there were no reciprocal links from your suppliers back to you on their respective home pages. My recommendation is to have all your suppliers post your logo (linked back to you) on their home page.
If you are a membership driven organization, are your members getting their bang for their buck? If the visitor can’t return to your website they are not. It takes the whole enchilada (all that you have to offer a visitor in your community) for a visitor to buy-in your destination.
I challenge you to be a visitor to your own website. If you would like an extra set of eyes, I’d be happy to offer my assistance. Everyone benefits from each others experience. It is a way to “pay it forward” to all travel partners in progress…
1 user commented in " Destination Marketing Organization Websites…Is it the whole Enchilada? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIs your website “just another pretty face”? Or does it really WORK for you?
I have gone to numerous sites that really make it way too difficult for you to find what you need.
Ok. So, dear friends who have these incredibly beautiful, graphic intense websites - slide shows, music, color intense pictures — that take FOREVER to load pages are one thing. Because we love them (they are artists or musicians or want us to ‘smell the roses’) we tap our fingers, go get coffee, or roll our eyes while their pages load.
BUT– If I’ve come to a website looking for information, or looking to make a purchase, or trying to decide if I want to hold a convention in your city — I DEFINITELY will NOT wait while a click on a tab or link on your site makes me wait, and wait, and …… wait!
If your website takes too long to open or to move from page to page I’m out of there and going back to Google to find another website or another city for my business.
In this fast paced world of gazelles in business, I want immediate information, instant engagement, super quick downloads!
And frankly Scarlett, I don’t care how beautiful your eventual page may turn out to be. If I came to your website to find some important information and my time is consumed waiting to get it, your slow dissolves from color photo to color photo are definitely a liability.
“please wait while we load…” gets you a couple of seconds of my interest
– but if it takes longer than two pen clicks (or worse yet, takes me to a doorstep page announcing “click here to enter”) — I am DEFINITELY gone!
We really do live in an age of instant gratification. And, in the business of information access – expecting patience is not a virtue – it can cost you clients big time.
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